Voices from the fringes: Not in Africa, not in Fiji

You have to work to find one of the poems of Will Nu’utupu Giles in print. The Samoan American from Honolulu’s poetry is—rather like Gertrude Stein’s—made to be shared via the human voice. It’s part of their Pacific Islander oral tradition, and they make the most of it. I started watching their videos, and I couldn’t choose only one for today’s National Poetry Month post.

Giles seeks out political undercurrents in the quotidian. As in “Deodorant”, where they walk into the personal hygiene aisle and emerge in the Middle Passage, genocide and colonialism:

But he also soars, as when he compares their family history to redwoods, in terms of strength and resiliency, here in “Prescribed Fire”.